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Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

(www.bbc.com)
293 points doener | 1 comments | 14 Jul 20 12:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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rich_sasha ◴[14 Jul 20 12:42 UTC] No.23831166[source]▶
If this is just Realpolitik/hardware independence, fine, but security..?

Any worthwhile Internet traffic should be encrypted in 2020, and if it isn’t, Huawei probably isn’t the most immediate concern.

And if it is encrypted, does it really matter who is listening?

Comments welcome, I know zilch about telecoms hardware.

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yodelshady ◴[14 Jul 20 13:06 UTC] No.23831424[source]▶
You can't encrypt "metadata" that the machine needs to know to do its job, and with enough of that, you can de-anonymise any public posters. And you'll have metadata on (some of) their contacts too.

Plus, if it's your tower, you can just switch it off, at an opportune moment.

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haecceity ◴[14 Jul 20 19:16 UTC] No.23836416[source]▶
If that's the case then you want as many providers as possible so no one has enough information to de-anonymize the traffic?
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1. wheatocean ◴[14 Jul 20 21:45 UTC] No.23838355[source]▶
Turning aside concerns about current and future provider interoperability (which is also a common reason for concern when using huawei hardware for core network purposes and would get worse as you expect them to integrate with several different vendors)...

Wouldn't traffic run through many parts of the network exposing data to even more providers? Wouldn't you be subject to any portion of the chain breaking, or being turned off?